London: The Biography

There are several late twentieth-century studies of London, among the best of which are S. Inwood’s A History of London (London, 1998), a truly comprehensive and scholarly account of the city from its earliest times, and R. Porter’s London: A Social History (London, 1994) which is more polemical in intent but no less readable. Landlords to London: the Story of a Capital and its Growth and The Selling of Mary Davies by S. Jenkins (London, 1975 and 1993) are invaluable. F. Sheppard’s London: A Social History (Oxford, 1998) is concise and serious, while M. Hebbert’s London (Chichester, 1998) is colourful and idiosyncratic. The most important guide to City architecture remains the Pevsner series; London 1: The City of London, edited by Simon Bradley and Nikolaus Pevsner (London, 1997) has brought it up to date. And then of course there is The London Encyclopaedia, edited by B. Weinreb and C. Hibbert (London, 1983), which is a prodigy of research and reference. There are also urban anthologies, among them The Oxford Book of London edited by P. Bailey (Oxford, 1995) and The Faber Book of London, edited by A.N. Wilson (London, 1993) in which appear passages of prose and verse which might otherwise have languished in obscure and forgotten places. The Pride of London, edited by W. and S. Scott (London, 1947) is also useful. An especial mention must be made of the three volumes, London 1066-1914, Literary Sources and Documents, edited by X. Baron (London, 1997). Here are Lamb and De Quincey, Engels and Dostoyevsky, Dekker and Gay, together with a hundred other observers and chroniclers of the city; these volumes are an important and indeed indispensable guide to London through the centuries.

I have devoted some space in this biography to the observations of foreign travellers, some of which are derived from secondary sources. Since it would be laborious and otiose to keep on creating footnotes for the same material, I include it here. There are the three volumes, London 1066-1914, which have already been mentioned. Together with these come England as Seen by Foreigners edited by J.W.B. Rye (London, 1865), Strange Island: Britain Seen through Foreign Eyes, 1395-1940, edited by F.M. Wilson (London, 1955), Mine Host London by W. Kent (London, 1948), As The Foreigners Saw Us by M. Letts (London, 1935) and Coming to London by various hands (London, 1957). English Interludes by C. Mackworth (London, 1956) is primarily concerned with the residence of nineteenth-century French poets in London, and can be compared with Voltaire: Letters Concerning the English Nation, edited by N. Cronk (Oxford, 1994). There is Tolstoy in London by V. Lucas (London, 1979), Monet in London by G. Sieberling (Seattle, 1988), Berlioz in London by A.W. Gaaz (London, 1950), Arthur Rimbaud by E. Starkie (London, 1938), Fyodor Dostoyevsky: Winter Notes on Summer Impressions translated by R.L. Renfield (London, 1985), The Life of Olaudah Equino (New York, 1971), A Japanese Artist in London by Yoshio Markino (London, 1911), The Letters of Henry James, edited by L. Edel (London, 1987) and Revolutionists in London by J.W. Hulse (Oxford, 1970). The memoirs of earlier travellers are collected in The Diary of Baron Waldstein translated and edited by G.W. Groos (London, 1981), The Journals of Two Travellers in Elizabethan and Early Stuart England edited by P. Razzell (London, 1995), A Tour of London by P.J. Grosley (Dublin, 1772), German Travellers in England 1400-1800 by W.D. Robson-Scott (Oxford, 1953), London in 1710 from the Travels of Zacharias Conrad von Uffenbach, edited by W.H. Quarrell and M. Mare (London, 1934), A Foreign View of England in the Reigns of George I and George II: The Letters of Cesar De Saussure, edited by Madame van Muyden (London, 1902). So is unrolled a wealth of comment.

On London paganism, the most important study is Magic in Modern London by E. Lovett (Croydon, 1925).